My practice as a painter is rooted in a profound, multifaceted interest in drawing and painting and ruminating on how mark-

making in these genres exists within contemporary culture and amongst the propagating digital images. I explore the canvas, pushing beyond its traditional confines. The work embraces the figurative, weaving emotions and narratives into expansive spaces. I am curious about ‘landscapes’ as a context for how we perceive the individual, being human and how this can effect viewer's reactions. 

Recent works, ‘Me’ and ‘Louche’, explored queerness and sexuality within two contrasting political contexts: conservative repression and liberal socialism. Personal statements about my gay life, morally questionable or not, the answer dependant on the viewer and their interpretation of the context they find these in. My research context currently includes exploring, for e.g., Documents of Contemporary Art: Practice, an anthology investigating the shift to open-ended actions, processes, and projects; also, in this series of the Whitehall Gallery Documents of Contemporary Art: Sexuality, where art can be driven by sexual desire and respond to repression and debate.  Although not explicitly focused on LGBTQ+, it does open the broader discussion of where the artist can go depending on movements, politics, place and reception of a given subject.  

I have been looking at Art since 1980: Charting the Contemporary by Peter R Kalb and further back to John Martin, his proto-cinematic works, and use of projection in the 18th century and hereand now, Nicole Eismann, whose image-making stimulates, especially the use of colour and composition that links to works by Manet. Cecily Brown is a painter of interest to me, her approach to painting the human form and paint application. She has said, ‘The paint is transformed into an image, and paint and image transform themselves into a third and new thing.’  I connect with this by exploring the making of a ‘new thing’ through the process of alchemy.

The vitality of painting, medium to surface beguiles, the analogue versus the digital engrosses. I combine mark-making, with the photographic, digitally layering, distorted images back onto the original. Considering the viewers connection with the changing forms cogitating ‘post-Instagram’ and physical communication in a gallery setting and beyond its walls. The most recent work formed for exhibiting was confined in a small, intimate space, a dark corner; the male figures, partially obscured through painterly application, rendered on board, and a projection of drawn trees, roots and limbs aims to generate a frisson.

I undertook the GSA Portfolio Preparation Course (2023/24), which has enabled me to strengthen and explore creative processes, cultivating and progressing the narratives within my work, both 2Dand 3D and as an artist.  I have studied and researched the unknown to me and allowed it to influence and relished working alongside others, being a part of the Glasgow art scene. The studio crits have been insightful and facilitated deeper growth. I know the MLitt milieu will provide me with a further learning experience through which I can continue to evolve as an artist.

 

Alan Brash
March 2024